DID TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY PREVENT SETTLERS FROM COVERING A NAKBA CONFERENCE?

Ma’ariv (p. C8) by Hani Yudel -- “Tel Aviv University prevented a reporter for Galei Israel from covering a conference it held,” charged the director general of the regional radio station in Judea and Samaria, Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, in a letter he sent to Education Minister Gidon Saar. The letter, a copy of which reached Ma’ariv, noted that a reporter on behalf of the radio station, Kobi Zucker, came to cover a conference titled, “the incidents of the Nakba and the right of return.” Mor-Yosef charged that upon entering the auditorium, the reporter was asked by Professor Gadi Elgazi, one of the organizers of the conference and the head of the General History Department, to which media outlet he belonged. Upon hearing the answer, claimed Mor-Yosef, the response from Elgazi, who is one of the first Israelis to refuse to serve in the military, was that he was not prepared to permit “settlers to cover the conference.” Mor-Yosef wrote that in the course of the disagreement that ensued between Elgazi and the reporter, many students gathered around Zucker and physically prevented him from covering the conference. “We view with great gravity the fact that in an academic institution, which is supposed to be entrusted with the freedom of speech and opinion, and which is budgeted and financed by the State of Israel, a member of the media was not allowed to do his journalistic job,” wrote Mor-Yosef. He asked the education minister to take steps to ensure that instances of this sort did not recur. No response was received from Tel Aviv University before the story was filed.

A reporter for Israel’s newest radio station, Givat Ze’ev-based Galei Yisrael (Israel Airwaves), was not permitted to enter a Tel Aviv University conference on the "Nakba" – as nationalist Arabs and anti-Israel elements refer to the Arab armies' crushing defeat in Israel's War of Independence.

The event was held last week in TAU, featuring events connected with the Nakba – (Catastrophe, in Arabic). The conference also dealt with the “need” to allow hundreds of thousands of Arabs, or more, to flood Israel under the “right of return.”
Galei Yisrael reporter Kobi Tzucker showed up to cover the event, but things did not turn out exactly as he thought. Tzucker said that one of the organizers, History Prof. Gadi Algazi, “saw me enter with a recording device and asked me which media outlet I’m from. I told him Galei Yisrael, and he said, ‘the radio from Givat Ze’ev?’”
“When I told him that yes, it’s in Givat Ze’ev, and then a few students gathered around me, and he said quite insultingly, ‘I will not have anyone from the settlements coming here to cover this event.'”
Givat Ze’ev is the fifth-largest Jewish town in Judea and Samaria, with some 11,200 people, located just north of Jerusalem. Only Modiin Illit, Beitar Illit, Maaleh Adumim (each with between 35,000 and 45,000 people), and Ariel (16,700), are larger than it.
For its part, Tel Aviv University is located in northern Tel Aviv, on lands occupied until 1948 by an Arab village named Sheikh Munis.
Tzucker didn’t give up, however, and managed to sneak in from another entrance. He was able to hear Muhammed Bakri, referred to in the conference as a “Palestinian producer,” discuss how the Nakba continues even now in Israel. Bakri is an Israeli-Arab actor and filmmaker, whose most notorious accomplishment is the anti-Israel film “Jenin, Jenin.”
Prof. Algazi sat in prison for a number of months 30 years ago for refusing to serve as an IDF soldier in Judea and Samaria. (IsraelNationalNews.com)